Stay up to date with the latest news from fintech! This week, we bring you updates and developments on partnerships, lending, banking, crypto, NFT and more. Enjoy reading!
Stripe and other tech companies commit USD 925 mln toward carbon capture (The Paypers)
Payment service provider Stripe has teamed up with several tech companies to commit nearly USD 1 billion in spurring the carbon-capture market. The companies announced the creation of Frontier, which plans to purchase USD 925 million worth of permanent carbon removal from companies that are developing the technology over the next nine years. Frontier will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Stripe. Alphabet, Meta, Shopify, and McKinsey are chipping in and committing to purchase some of the carbon-capture solutions. Read more.
FINTECH GIANT FIS TO LAUNCH INSTITUTIONAL BITCOIN, CRYPTO TRADING (Bitcoin Magazine)
FIS, a publicly-traded fintech company and the largest processing and payments provider in the world, has partnered with New York-based cryptocurrency infrastructure firm Fireblocks to enable its over 6,000 capital markets clients access to a full suite of financial services for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Read more.
Brussels warns EU countries that ruble gas payments may breach sanctions (Politico)
European governments are facing a major dilemma after the European Commission said Moscow’s demand that payments for gas deliveries be converted into rubles risks breaching EU sanctions. A decree signed by President Vladimir Putin on March 31 creates a process where foreign buyers of gas from so-called “unfriendly countries” — a list which includes EU members — have to pay in rubles. In practice, buyers can pay in the original hard currency designated in the contract, but those euros or dollars are then converted into rubles before the payment is finalized. Read more.
Nexo and Mastercard launch ‘world first’ crypto-backed payment card (Reuters)
Crypto lender Nexo said it has teamed up with global payments company Mastercard (MA.N) to launch on Wednesday what it calls the world’s first “crypto-backed” payment card. It signals the latest move by crypto and incumbent financial networks to join forces as digital assets become more mainstream. Nexo said the card, available in selected European countries initially, allows users to spend without having to sell their digital assets such as bitcoin, which are used as collateral to back the credit granted. Read more.
Dutch Payments Provider TerraPay to Expand Into US, LatAm (PYMNTS)
Digital payments infrastructure provider TerraPay has received approval to operate a money service business in the U.S, the Dutch company said in a news release Thursday (April 14). According to the release, TerraPay secured a money services business (MSB) license in Florida, which lets it mobilize remittances from the U.S. in real time. The company said the license will help it expand its partnership network in the U.S. and Latin America to facilitate low-cost, hassle-free, instant transactions in 96 countries. Read more.
WhatsApp permitted to extend payments service to 100 million users in India (Techcrunch)
The National Payments Corporation of India, the payments body that oversees the widely popular UPI instrument, has given approval to WhatsApp to extend its payments service to 100 million users in the South Asian market, a person familiar with the matter said. WhatsApp was previously allowed to rollout WhatsApp Pay to 40 million users in the world’s second largest internet market. WhatsApp, the most popular smartphone app in India, initially rolled out its payments service in India in 2020, but the Meta-owned service has struggled to expand the offering to a larger base in India because of confusing regulatory pushback. The NPCI has insisted that WhatsApp rolls out the payments service in step-by-step phases, a person familiar with the matter said, even as no other company has had to comply with a similar order. Read more.
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